#realmoforder

I’ve been thinking about the gameplay mechanics of Realm of Order and in particular, borders and territory and how players will be able to claim them. There are some challenges with this and It’s not obvious who has the ‘right’ to build a new city at any given location.  The thing is, now I’m thinking about real-world property rights (which began after I spoke to a friend of mine who is saving up for a house) and I’m rather uneasy about the topic. In Auckland, the city I am living in at the moment, the median cost for property is more than a million dollars [1]. Ouch. That is a lot of money and in order to get a loan for this it is going to cost you a quarter of a million dollar deposit on average [2]. That’s quite some saving to do. Also I forgot to mention, almost 1 in every 10 properties in Auckland are unoccupied [3]. That must be close to 1 in every street! Well with so many unoccupied property in the City, perhaps there just isn’t a very high demand to live or work in Auckland, which I would be tempted to believe except for the fact that both the demand and price for land continues to ‘sky tower’ (as Aucklanders would say).  However, that’s not why I’m uneasy. I feel this way because of a much more sinister situation at play. 

The Property Crisis

Property is, at its core a term used to describe things you have the exclusive ownership right or control of. What I am realising, is that it is fundamentally wrong for any entity (except the crown) to have any kind of ownership right to, or control of, any territory that they are not actively occupying and/or otherwise using for residential or commercial use. This is due to the fact that land is fundamentally different from other forms of personal property. Vehicles, clothing, furniture and other goods can be transported and consumed where as it’s impossible to transport or consume land (because it’s defined as a fixed location). This means that at a fundamental level, renting out property to another party is in fact a violation of the renter’s property rights because if a renter has any kind of ownership or control of the property (such as moving in their personal belongings and restricting who may enter the property) than they must be recognised as the owner of that property. I’m honestly astonished that in the 21st century, the private property rights of millions of people are being breached and worst of all, the state, who are meant to be protecting private-property rights are actively enforcing the breach of these fundamental rights. I don’t think many people realise that this kind of large-scale natural-rights violation could be possible in modern society. Fortunately, there is no need for a civil war or revolution to fix it. There is a precidented method for resolving large-scale gross human-rights violations. In 1833, the UK introduced the Slavery Abolition Act that outlawed slavery and then in 1837 with the Slave Compensation Act ‘purchased’ the freedom of more than 800,000 slaves in order to protect their rights [4]. One thing to note here, is that none of the money went to the those who were freed, instead it was used to cover any losses to any entities incurred by the act. The loan the goverment made in order to cover these payments was not paid back until 2015. Therefore with this precident, a similar act could be introduced today in order to address the Property Crisis. The crown would draft an act to use a loan to purchase the land from any landlords who are not a rightful occupier of that land. The crown would then give the land to the active occupants of the land or if otherwise unoccupied, reserve it as ‘public’ or ‘protected’ land where the crown may sell it or give it to any rightfully occupying party at a later date. To be clear, this would not prevent anybody from selling/buying land but they must vacate/occupy the land within the reasonable timeframe enforced by the crown. Motels and Hotels can still operate as long as they are staffed by people hired by the business. Apartments and any other multi-tenant property would be co-owned by all of the occupants and they must establish their own organisational body exclusively owned and/or operated by its occupants. If land would become unoccupied for any reason for an unreasonable length, that land would be surrended back to the crown. People can still go on holiday and/or homeswap as long as they do not aquire the rightful occupation to a new property.

I believe there would be very positive economic ramifications for these changes. Capital would be freed up and flow into other areas of the economy creating a much wealthier society. Property supply will correspond to occupational demand and therefore land prices should be much more affordable. People who previously rented will have significant surplus cash to spend in the economy and/or save. I expect wages to likely go down by some extent and for industries that rely on the wrongful ownership of land to either adapt or go out of business. The goverment would also need a department to provision land that it reserves the rights to.

I really hope that others will come to understand and/or accept that the current property model for land actually violates private-property rights. If enough people do, the goverment will have the mandate to protect their rightful private-property.

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